


Colder Bones

by bluejoseph



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Blood, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Death, Disease, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Josh has orange hair in case that matters to anyone, M/M, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Orange-haired Josh, Reanimation, Sickness, Smut, TOPFL Halloween Challenge, TOPFL October Challenge, The Pantaloon, Violence, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies, independent!Tyler, sassy!tyler, shy!josh, songfic?, sweet!Josh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 09:04:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16302182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluejoseph/pseuds/bluejoseph
Summary: “I could love you,” Josh says one night, his head in Tyler's lap. It's dark and they don't want to waste the batteries in the flashlights, so they can't really do anything that requires sight. They spend most nights laying around, talking, or fucking.Tyler doesn't say anything for a moment, just strokes Josh's half-dyed orange curls. He's grown rather fond of those curls, even more so the boy attached to them, but considering the average lifespan these days is pretty short, he doesn't want to admit it.“I could love you too,” he says finally, curling a bit of the hair at the base of Josh's neck around his finger. Josh shudders. “In better times.”





	Colder Bones

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING! There are some triggers I did not mention in the tags because they would spoil the plot of the story, and thus the experience of the reader. Please, read with CAUTION!
> 
> Title is from The Pantaloon by Twenty One Pilots.

A month after the death of his family, Tyler is spitting blood into the sink.

It's not a lot of blood, maybe a teaspoon, but it's enough. He just stares down at it for a moment, crimson red against porcelin white. He'd known it would happen, somewhere on the edge of his brain, where unwanted thoughts lingered and waited to be noticed. There should be terror filling his throat like bile, he should be scrambling against the bathroom door, desperately grasping for the handle but unable to get a grip in his panic.

Tyler does not panic. He carefully picks up his water bottle, wastes a mouthful of precious water by swishing it around in his mouth and spitting, again, into the sink. It's just slightly pink, but it washes the blood down the drain. 

Feeling calmer than he has in a long time, Tyler double-checks to make sure the bathroom window and door are locked, then climbs into the bathtub. He wraps his two blankets around him, leans his head back on his pillow, and shuts off his flashlight.

Sleep never comes.

 

*

 

Morning does come, however, and Tyler is just as tired as he was before, but with a bonus ache in his back from sleeping in the tub. He should sleep in one of the bedrooms, really, but the beds in those rooms once belonged to someone living—parents, children, a family. They slept in them, smiled in them, loved in them. A bed is a safe space, and while Tyler is strongly in need of one, these beds aren't his. 

Besides, the doors in those bedrooms don't lock, and Tyler may be a fool, but not so much a fool as to sleep in a room where the doors don't lock. The Devourers would get him, and that would be that.

He has good reason to be wary.

Tyler's almost certain that the family that lived here wasn't killed, but rather left for somewhere they must have thought was better. This is evident in the lack of some personal items—cell phones, purses, wallets, money. It's also clear that they left early on in the epidemic because they bothered to take these valuables with them. A diamond ring is practically worthless now, at least to Tyler.

The lack of bloodstains on the carpet is also a good indication that whoever lived here got out in one piece. Tyler almost resents this, but mostly tries not to think about it. He tries not to think about a lot of things, really, because he doesn't know the answers to the questions he asks himself.

The first thing Tyler does this morning when he gets up is look in the mirror. He opens his mouth wide, sticking out his tongue, staring. No blood, not so much as a drop. Considering Tyler has skipped stages one through four of the five stages of grief—going straight to acceptance—the missing sign confuses him, almost. 

Well, there's still plenty of hours in the day yet. 

He has some crackers and water for breakfast because that's all he really has. He dares to open the bathroom window, just a crack, so he can get a bit of fresh air. It's just slightly breezy, which Tyler both loves and hates. The wind, blowing around his pale form, is very grounding; it makes him feel close to alive. On the downside, the sound of rustling trees can cover up the sound of approaching Devourers. He must be extra alert on days like these. 

As he does every morning, Tyler marks a single dark line on the bathroom wall with a sharpie. He doesn't know what the date is anymore, but he likes to take note of the passing of days. This is where he's stayed since his family died, and he has almost forty marks to prove it.

He remembers a story from the Bible, the infamous tale of Noah and the flood. God made it rain for forty days and forty nights on Earth, causing massive flash floods which killed almost all life.

Vaguely, Tyler wonders if God planned this, if anyone could have, or if it surprised Him as much as it did everyone else.

 

*

Night comes again like it always does. In a world of chaos and death, there is still even just a shred of order. Really, chaos and order are not so different from one another, but Tyler, like all human beings, still thinks they are two separate things.

Sure enough, just when Tyler's about to go to bed again, he tastes blood on his tongue. He spits it into the sink quickly. It's about the same amount as yesterday.

Tonight, though, he sleeps. Blood is a certainty, and in times like these, Tyler craves certainty more than he craves food and water and life.

 

*

 

Tyler was having a good day.

As far as a post-apocalyptic day in what was formerly America goes, it was good. He had a can of peaches for breakfast, he read one of the books in he took from the bedroom he thinks belonged to a teenage boy, and oh, yeah, there were no horrific screams from outside. In fact, there wasn't any sound at all, up until the sound of the garage door opening.

Not the garage door itself—it ran on electricity, and there wasn't any of that anymore—but the side door that opened from the garage into the kitchen. It's been so quiet that Tyler was able to hear it. Its hinges need oiling, desperately, because it squeaks more than a mouse with its tail cut off. 

Of course, the moment he hears it, Tyler drops his book and sits up from where he was leaning against the wall. He shuts the bathroom window, locks it, and slowly pulls the metal bat out from underneath the claw-foot bathtub. This bat was Zack's once; he took baseball for a few seasons, long enough for him to convince Mom and Dad that he would get good use out of nicer equipment. It's the only thing Tyler took from his home, except for the few cans of food still left in the pantry, and those are long gone now.

Zack's bat is the only weapon Tyler has, and it shows. There are multiple dents and scratches across the edge of the bat from the time his family died. Tyler's practiced swinging the bat since then, beating pillows and cardboard boxes until his lungs were heaving and sweat was pouring down his face. He likes to think he could take off a Devourer's head, but he'd probably only piss it off.

Bat now securely in hand, Tyler grips the handle, listening. It's quiet again.

Something's wrong. Devourers are scrambling, shambling beings with only one ruling thought and feeling—hunger. They don't care if they make noise, and they never stop to think that it could alert their prey. So, whatever made the door squeak open can't be a Devourer.

Tyler should stay in the bathroom, where whatever it is won't be able to get him, but he can't. He's a fool, such a fool.

Slowly, he unlocks the bathroom door and steps out into the hall. 

He's been over this house many times, but it feels alien to him all the same; it's not his, it's never been his. He grips tighter on the bat in his hand and creeps down the hallway, careful not to make any noise. Devourers rely strongly on scent, Tyler is pretty sure. Fuck, he should have sprayed some body spray all over himself or something. Or would that make it worse?

Tyler's so surprised to see another human being, he almost drops his bat.

The other human being seems just as surprised, jumping nearly a foot in the air. He recovers quickly, though, and points his gun immediately at Tyler, but doesn't shoot. Tyler grips his bat tighter, pulls it back just slightly in preparation to swing, but knows he's completely outmatched.

Neither one of them dares to strike, just eying one another up. This stranger has curly dark hair that's orange on the tips like it was dyed before. He has a nose ring, as well, and some of the most piercing brown eyes Tyler has ever seen. From the way he's staring him down, paired with the gun in his hand, Tyler feels more than a little intimidated.

If Tyler were braver, he'd swing his bat at this kid without a second thought, or cause some kind of diversion and lunge for his gun, but Tyler's particular brand of foolishness is not high in bravery. He lowers his bat.

Amazingly, the boy keeps his gun trained on Tyler only for a few seconds longer, before slowly lowering his own weapon. His intimidating look has softened at the edges, replaced by a curiosity Tyler reluctantly matches.

He hasn't seen another person in so long, he's not sure what to do.

“I wasn't going to shoot you,” the boy says finally. His posture—stiff, tense—lets Tyler know he's still wary, but perhaps not so much as before.

Tyler says nothing because he doesn't know what to say. He steps forward, but to the left, so he's approaching the boy at an angle like one would with a potentially dangerous stray animal. The boy has his gun in his hand still but doesn't lift it again as Tyler looks him over.

The boy is pale, but not unnaturally so. When he speaks, there is no blood on his tongue, and his arms don't tremble from tortured fever. 

“You human?” the boy asks, although it's a little silly to bother asking. If Tyler weren't human, he'd have already torn Josh to pieces.

He nods, once. “You?” It's the first word he's said aloud in a month.

“Yeah.” The boy gives Tyler one final suspicious look before setting his gun on the small table in the hallway. Something akin to relief washes over Tyler, and he leans his bat against the table. A truce.

“Where did you come from?”

“From here. From outside Columbus, I mean.” The boy blinks. He's still staring at Tyler. “I'm Josh.”

“Tyler.”

 

*

 

It's a risk, but they sit in the lounge. Josh sits in the reading chair Tyler imagines belonged to the woman of the house, and he crosses his legs, fiddling with his thumbs nervously. His gun is at his feet, sitting by the foot of the chair. He also took off his backpack, which is sitting against the side of the chair. Tyler doesn't know what's in it; he's afraid to ask.

“I lived with my grandmother a few roads over,” Josh says when Tyler asks how he came to be here. “She had a refurbished basement, so that's where we were staying, but she passed on.” There's a hint of grief in Josh's voice, and he blinks a few times. Tyler wants to say something sympathetic, but he's forgotten what grief is like, so he says nothing. “I could've stayed there, but it obviously wasn't the same alone, you know?”

That, Tyler knows.

Josh fiddles with his thumbs for a moment, staring down at them, then glances up to Tyler, who realizes he asked him a question and is waiting for a response. “Sorry, what was that?”

“How did you get here?”

“This was my house,” Tyler lies. “My family was up North with my grandparents when the first waves of the virus hit. They never came back.”

“I'm sorry,” Josh says, giving him a look that can only be described as sorrow. He's genuinely sorry for Tyler's loss, but it's not the truth.

His family is dead, either way. Tyler tells himself it doesn't matter if Josh knows the whole story or not.

“I'm sorry I kind of broke into your house,” the other boy adds, fiddling nervously with his fingers again. He has a hangnail. “I didn't think anyone was here.”

Tyler just shrugs.

“Can I...” Josh swallows. “Can I stay here?”

Now Tyler is puzzled. He listens a bit more intently as Josh goes on. “I don't do well on my own...we don't have to stay in the same room or anything, I just, I'd feel better if I knew someone was nearby. So I could have someone to talk to.”

'So I can have an ally', his eyes say. Tyler knows asking someone to come to your aid these days is a ridiculous question, but the thinly veiled fear in Josh's face makes him look desperate. He probably is.

Tyler doesn't know how long he's sticking around here, but he can see the value in having Josh around, anyway. That gun, for starters.

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, you can stay here,” Tyler clarifies, and Josh lights up. “The bathroom in the hall is the only other room in the house that locks, so you'll probably want to stay there.”

Josh stands up, takes his backpack. He grabs his gun as well, and Tyler notices him subtly slip the safety on. “Thank you,” he says, and he sounds like he means it.

“No problem,” Tyler says, but by the way he can't tear his gaze away from Josh's, he already knows it will be.

 

*

 

They settle rather quickly into a rhythm. That first day, they split their rations of food and water evenly between one another, though neither one of them proposed it aloud. Now Tyler has a jar of raspberry preserves, and some cans of soup, and some more crackers, and six bottles of water. There's more, but he tries not to think too much about it. No need to worry over something so irrelevant as his next meal.

Most of the time, they don't interact at all, which Tyler is either relieved or disappointed by. He doesn't know which.

They do eat dinner together, either in Josh's room or his. It's not dinner like Tyler used to know it—on weekends, his mom would sit everyone down, and they'd have meat and vegetables and dessert. Now, dinner consists of him and Josh and some canned peas, maybe some stale crackers. Still, it was better than nothing.

After going so long without seeing another live person, sitting down with Josh feels pretty weird. They talk about what things were like before, mostly, and sometimes Josh talks about his grandmother. Tyler doesn't bring up his family once, and Josh doesn't ask him to. 

Tyler had friends once, way before all this mess. What he is slowly starting to form with Josh isn't that, not even strong as an alliance. It's a truce, and a truce is just fine.

This is what Tyler tells himself at three in the morning when he tastes blood on his tongue and stares at the ceiling, trying not to think about the boy just a few rooms away.

 

*

 

A few nights later, Tyler has a nightmare. He doesn't have nightmares often, believe it or not, so it completely blindsides him. 

It starts in the living room. He sees his family, which in itself is almost as terrifying as what comes after. His parents are at the kitchen counter, talking in hushed voices while his siblings watch TV in the living room.

Tyler moves towards the front door against his will. He shuts his eyes tightly, so once he gets knocked to the floor, he can't see what happens to his family.

He can hear it, though, and their screams turn from terror to agony to silence. He opens his eyes just long enough to grasp the silver bat by the door, then shuts them again. Blindly, he swings. 

Tyler hears a howl of pain, animalistic, and teeth clutch at his leg. It tells him where his enemy is. He grips the bat harder and hits his mark again.

One, two, three hits, and its body bursts like a tick fat with blood. Tyler falls to the floor, shaking and covered in blood and bile and stray bits of flesh.

“It's over,” he tells himself, forcing his gasping lungs to slow. It's over.

A hand clasps his shoulder, and Tyler's body freezes. Another on the back of his neck, holding his head in place. He can feel it, just a bloody mass of skin and flesh. It's all that's left.

A blood-curdling scream rips free from his throat, and there are hands everywhere—his ankle, his hip, his face, scratching at his eyes. They break his hands, they eat his fingers. Something cold and metal is shoved into his mouth, and without even seeing it, Tyler knows it's the keys to the front door. He chokes on them, gags and writhes as broken limbs tear at healthy ones, as broken teeth and hands turn his skin raw.

Revenge is pointless if you're dead.

Try telling Tyler's family that.

His eyes shoot open, and Tyler screams, scrambling against the back of the tub. He's awake, and every devourer in five miles is going to hear him, but he doesn't car.e He screams and screams and screams until his throat is raw, until he can't breathe.

Vaguely, he's aware of hands on his shoulder, his back. He leaps backward again, scrambling, trying to get away from them. He hears a voice then, soft, and the hand touches his knee where the denim is torn, and Tyler almost sobs with relief because it's warm. It's not cold and dead like everything else in the world, like everything hunting Tyler.

He lunges for this warm, alive body, and burrows his face into it. The body's owner makes a small, surprised noise but wraps their arms around his back, rubbing in circles. Finally bursting into tears, Tyler weeps into the figure's welcoming embrace until the world slips away around him.

 

*

 

The first thing Tyler's aware of when he comes to is the light. Sunlight or flashlight, he can't tell, but it hurts his eyes. He moves his arm up to cast it over his face, and the simple action sends a wave of aches through him.

He feels like he's slept for a week. Faintly, he recalls his nightmare, the feeling of raw flesh against his skin, and he shudders. The arm draped lazily over his side tightens gently around him, and Tyler nestles into the blankets again, attempting to forget.

Wait.

He pops his eyes back open, glances to the around him. Rolling over carefully, he's startled to come nose to nose with Josh, fast asleep. 

He should get up, but he doesn't, because he's a fool. Tyler just lays there instead, enjoys the sensation of Josh's slow breaths ghosting over his face, the warmth of being close to someone so alive.

As much as it embarrasses Tyler to admit it, he's just a tiny bit touch-starved. I mean, he did go a whole month without even seeing another person. He's allowed.

Josh suddenly stirs against him, opening his eyes before Tyler can shut his and pretend to be asleep. They stare into one another's faces, neither moving. It would be romantic, except they're laying in a bathtub, and Tyler can taste just the slightest bit of blood on his tongue. He swallows.

Finally, Josh breaks the silence by offering up a sleepy smile. “Hey.”

This flusters Tyler, for some reason, and he pulls his head back, just a tiny bit. “Hey.”

Josh removes his arm from around Tyler's side to stretch and then moves to rest it on the small space between them. Tyler is strangely disappointed. “Did you sleep okay?” Josh asks in a quiet voice.

He would shrug, but he's exhausted. “I feel like I got run over by a bus. How'd I get here?”

“I heard you screaming,” Josh says, voice lowering even further. “I tried to get you to open the door, but you...you were still screaming, so I kicked it down.” He looks sheepish.

Tyler blinks, surprised. “You kicked down a door for me?”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess.” There's the faintest of blushes on Josh's cheeks. “I calmed you down, and carried you back here.”

It is now that Tyler realizes that 'here' is the hall bathroom—Josh's room. It's smaller than Tyler's room but still big enough for a bathtub, single sink, and toilet. It's more organized than Tyler's room as well, where supplies are stacked haphazardly on the floor.

“It's okay,” Josh says. “It's the end of the world. Everyone has night terrors now.”

Tyler wants to thank him but doesn't know how. “I'm usually the big spoon,” he says instead.

Josh just grins at him, all pearly white teeth. “Sure you are.”

 

*

 

Since neither of them can figure out how to fix the lock in the master bathroom door, so Tyler just moves in with Josh. Again, it's a smaller bathroom, and since they're sharing supplies now, there's not enough room for two makeshift beds. 

“It only makes sense to share the tub,” Josh says when Tyler objects to his idea. His hands are raised in a don't-shoot-the-messenger way, but he's smiling because he already knows he's won.

“I hate you,” Tyler says, but his eyes say otherwise.

So, they share the tub. The first night is awkward, mostly because Tyler is scrunching himself up to one side as much as possible. They stay uncomfortably awake for almost an hour before Josh just drapes an arm over Tyler with a sigh like this isn't what they both wanted the whole time. “'C'mere,” he says in a hushed voice, and Tyler does.

They wake up tangled together in the morning. Somehow, sleeping so close is different in the daylight, because Tyler shoves him away. “Get off me. You're making me too hot.”

Naturally, Josh laughs, which only makes Tyler's face get warm. He scowls anyway. It's a look.

He's still tasting blood in his mouth, every once in a while, but he swallows it instead of spitting it into the sink. He can't--won't let Josh know.

 

*

 

“Have you ever had a boyfriend before?” Tyler asks Josh one night. Really, he should know better than to ask things like this, but some part of him wants to hear the answer.

Josh is laying on the floor—which is really unsanitary, by the way—while Tyler sits on the edge of the tub. If Tyler's question has surprised him, he doesn't show it.

“Couple times,” he says. “You?”

Slowly, Tyler shakes his head. “No. I had a girlfriend once. Like,” he goes on, “there was this one guy I liked for a little while, but he moved away junior year.”

“Sucks to be him.”

“I guess, yeah.”

“Sucks to anybody these days.”

This comes across as funny to Tyler, who laughs. Josh joins in, the kind of weird, cackling laughter you just get spontaneously that doesn't go away for ages. Their lungs hurt by the time they've finished, and Tyler tastes blood in his mouth again. Maybe he coughed it up, he doesn't know.

 

*

 

Obviously, there's a difference between living in the same house as someone and sharing a room with them. At first, Tyler and Josh were only physically closer, but as all living things do, it evolved.

“Keys,” Josh says one night, opening a can of peaches. Lately, they've been each opening a can of something and then splitting it. Tyler has an opened can of beans in his hand, about to dive in, but he freezes when Josh says the word.

“What?”

“You said something about keys when you were coming out of your nightmare,” Josh tells him carefully. He sits on the floor, can of fruit in one hand and fork in the other. “I thought it might be important.”

Shut up, Tyler wants to say.

“My family,” he says instead. Josh sets his food down, looking at Tyler seriously and giving him his full attention.

“I lied to you...this isn't my house, it never was. I used to live a couple miles from here. My family didn't disappear.” Tyler takes a breath. Josh doesn't break into accusations or anger or disappointment, his expression doesn't even change, so Tyler goes on.

“A month after the first outbreak in Ohio, we were in the house. Mom and Dad were talking about it over the kitchen counter, and Zack and Jay and Maddie--” he feels a hitch in his throat, actual grief, and he doesn't know what to do with it. “My brothers and sister. They were watching TV.”

Josh doesn't speak up, just watches and listens.

“I let the dog out,” Tyler says, voice hushed. “We were supposed to lock the door after, always, but...I didn't. And then there was this shriek from outside, and I went to lock it, but it got in.”

No question what 'it' is. Devourers aren't human anymore. Josh nods to let him go on.

“It flung the door open, and I got knocked back, and it got them. Zack always left his bat from practice by the door, so I just grabbed it, and I hit it, and it was so full on my family that it was slow. I hit it and it popped like a party balloon, and there was blood everywhere.”

“I'm so sorry, Tyler,” Josh whispers. 

“No, you don't understand.” Tyler slams his can of beans down. “My parents and Jay were killed right away, but Zack and Maddie, they were still alive for a few minutes. They couldn't even cry, Josh, they were in so much pain.” He chokes down a sob, wishing he had just told Josh to shut up in the first place. “They died right in front of me. I killed them.”

“You didn't know, Tyler,” Josh says softly. He grabs Tyler's hands. “You didn't know the Devourer was coming, it was an accident.”

Tyler knows that, but he can't accept it. He can't accept that this wasn't somehow his fault, that he didn't kill them. He should have gotten up from the floor sooner, should have gotten in the Devourer's path so it'd eat him first, should have just locked that goddamn door.

Suddenly Tyler can't be in this room anymore. He gets up quickly, yanking his hands free of Josh's and storming out of the bathroom. “Wait!” Josh cries, scrambling up, but Tyler slams the door behind him. Josh is smart. Josh will remember to lock it.

Tyler doesn't know how, but he ends up in the front yard. It's raining, which normally he would be grateful for, but he's so upset he can't. He cries instead.

The terrible thing is, Tyler is safe because for ten minutes every night he tastes blood on his tongue, which means the Devourers won't come for him, as much as he wishes they would.

The Devourers do not come, but Josh does. He finds Tyler shaking against the garage door that doesn't open, and there are tears running down his face, and he probably looks like a mess. “Get back in the house!” Tyler screams at him because just because he's safe out here doesn't mean Josh is.

Josh doesn't listen. Josh goes to him and takes his face in his hands, and before Tyler can shove him away and scream at him again, he kisses him.

Tyler may be scared and angry and more alone than Josh knows, but he kisses back right away, startling himself. It's a transfer of emotion—all the hate in his body suddenly turns to intense, feverish love. He fists Josh's shirt in his hands and pulls him sharp against him, kisses him like he's never kissed anyone before and doesn't care if he gets it right. 

Rather, Josh is the one who hesitates, mouth frozen against him with surprise for just a moment. But when Tyler yanks him close, pushes his tongue into his mouth, Josh stops holding back. He dives into the kiss, pushes Tyler against the garage door without shame. Tyler makes a little noise in the back of his throat and holds Josh to his body like his life depends on it.

Something akin to relief washes over Tyler, but he's too overwhelmed to figure out why.

 

*

 

Somehow they wind up in the bathroom again in one piece, no Devourers in sight. Josh locks the door behind them, whispers “It's okay” under his breath, and Tyler wants to weep. He kisses Josh instead.

They're both shaking like crazy, mostly quiet until Tyler moves to Josh's neck, making the other boy gasp. Josh's half-dyed curls are sweaty and slightly damp against Tyler's face, but he doesn't care. His mouth starts under Josh's chin, moves down, down, down.

Tyler's never sucked dick before. But hey, first time for everything, right?

“Tyler,” Josh gasps. He's shaking. “Tyler, oh my god.” His hands are in Tyler's hair. It's nice.

There's something boiling below Tyler's stomach, a certain hunger he can't define with words. Tyler has not felt hungry for so long, not like this. This is a good kind of hunger. This kind of hunger, he can handle.

Josh certainly seems to like it.

 

*

 

Tyler spits into the sink after Josh finishes. It's the first time in weeks, actually, that something besides blood has made the move from Tyler's mouth to pristine white porcelain. It's a gift Tyler didn't know he wanted.

Meanwhile, Josh sinks to his knees, trembling with either aftershocks or relief; Tyler doesn't know which. He gets to the floor as well, moving close to Josh again. He surprises himself yet again by pressing his lips softly to the other boy's sweaty forehead, placing a gentle, comforting hand on his knee. Josh pulls Tyler closer, fingers working at the zipper of his jeans.

“You don't have to,” Tyler whispers. “It's okay.”

Josh kisses him to shut him up, and shoves his hand down Tyler's pants, and Tyler doesn't protest again.

They don't fall asleep that night so much as pass out. Their bodies aren't used to exertion these days.

 

*

 

If this were not the end of the world, if there weren't cannibalistic, diseased humans running around eating everything that moves, if there were still things like family and governments and friends and cable TV, if every meal didn't come out of a can, would Tyler and Josh still be fucking?

Probably not.

The thing about the end of the world is, it drives people to do things that they normally wouldn't. Tyler can't conclusively explain Josh's motivation for fucking around with him, but he thinks it might be just because Josh is so lonely. After the night Tyler tells him what really happened to his family, Josh becomes clingy. Like, really clingy. He hangs all over Tyler, all the time—holding his hand, draping his arm over his waist when they lay around, leaning his head over his shoulder. He's kind of like a new puppy that desperately wants to bond with you. 

Tyler doesn't push the new puppy away. Tyler lets Josh hang all over him. Really, he doesn't mind as much as he was pretending he did.

Josh doesn't want to be alone, which is why he's stuck to Tyler like a fly to flypaper. And Tyler?

He's beginning to want to stay alive—with Josh—and that upsets him terribly.

 

*

 

Time passes. 

Another thing about the end of the world is that a lot of things like television and internet connections and radios don't work anymore, so you have to find something else to do. Tyler manages to find a few board games in one of the kids' rooms upstairs. He lets Josh beat him at Candyland and Monopoly and Scrabble until they get sick of playing.

Josh draws on the walls. He's actually a pretty good artist, and he makes a likeness of his lover on the wall by the sink. Tyler stares at it sometimes, wonders how long it'll be before it doesn't look like him anymore.

Tyler reads. Josh doesn't like reading much, but Tyler reads out loud to him, and he likes that. There's a lot of books and magazines in the house, but most of them aren't the type two young adult boys would be interested in, so they don't do this too often.

Of course, they do a lot of fucking around. Tyler actually gets to be pretty good at sucking dick, at least according to Josh. Practice makes perfect, he supposes.

 

*

 

“I could love you,” Josh says one night, his head in Tyler's lap. It's dark and they don't want to waste the batteries in the flashlights, so they can't really do anything that requires sight. They spend most nights laying around, talking, or fucking.

Tyler doesn't say anything for a moment, just strokes Josh's half-dyed orange curls. He's grown rather fond of those curls, even more so the boy attached to them, but considering the average lifespan these days is pretty short, he doesn't want to admit it.

“I could love you too,” he says finally, curling a bit of the hair at the base of Josh's neck around his finger. Josh shudders. “In better times.”

 

*

 

Tyler tastes more and more blood in his mouth every night, but he refuses to think much of it.

That is a mistake. 

Tyler is a fool.

 

*

 

They're in the tub, Josh laying back on the blankets and Tyler on top of him. The whole room smells like sex these days and they've basically ruined a lot of their clothes and blankets, but it's the end of the world and they can't do anything about it, plus neither of them can really be bothered to care.

For all the fucking around they've been doing, they've not actually had sex yet. Tyler knows Josh wants to, can see it in his eyes every time he touches him, but he can't, he honestly can't.

Josh is kissing him and bucking his hips up into him, and Tyler's making all these noises in the back of his throat that should be embarrassing but aren't. Just for a moment, he thinks about seriously fucking Josh like he wants, like they both want.

And then something in his stomach lurches.

It's not just nausea, it's pain, unlike anything he's ever known in his young life. Tyler is barely able to scramble off of Josh before he's spilling his breakfast onto the floor, along with blood.

A lot of blood. More of his own blood than he's ever seen before, more than all that blood he's felt welling up in his mouth from time to time. This is more, this is scary and disgusting and terribly, imminently the end.

“Tyler?” Josh scrambles up as well, hand flying to his mouth when he sees the mess on the floor and the retching, gasping boy on the floor. “Oh, my god.”

 

*

 

Tyler doesn't know how long he throws up for. His stomach just keeps finding more and more blood to purge. 

To his credit, Josh doesn't run off on him. He stays by Tyler's side, wiping the blood and bile off his mouth with a cloth and holding him and trying to stop the sobs sputtering from Tyler's lips.

 

*

 

By the time the vomiting is over, Tyler should be tired, but he isn't. He doesn't feel much at all, actually, save for a faint pain in his stomach that reminds him of hunger, and a slight ache in his bones. This terrifies him, but he has other things to attend to. 

Namely, Josh.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Josh whispers. Tyler has pushed himself over to the bathroom door, back against it, and he won't let Josh near him. They've been kissing and touching for ages, but it can't be spread like that. It has to get into your blood, has to seep into ripped flesh and nasty wounds.

Slowly, Tyler pulls up one pant leg. Just above the cuff of his jeans is one such nasty wound, given to him by the Devourer that claimed his family's lives. It's only by luck that he didn't get their fate, but he wishes he had. This is a far worse way to go.

Tyler has no good answer to Josh's question, so he says nothing. Why didn't he tell him when they first met, so Josh could kill him then and there before he was in any pain? Why did he kiss him, fuck him, love him when all the while, he was turning from Human to Infected to Devourer?

Because he didn't want to be alone. 

Because really, when it comes down to it, he didn't want to die.

He still doesn't.

There's no cure.

Tyler's head is dizzy from blood loss, but he knows it's the end of him as a rational being. Already, his skin is dangerously pale, and a hunger is starting to bite, curiously, at his stomach. A desire to tear into skin and flesh and eat, just eat, to try and force it away.

He can't devour Josh. Not after all that's happened. And almost more than that, he can't go on. He can't let himself become the same being that killed his family.

“You have to shoot me,” he rasps, throat ragged from vomiting.

Immediately, Josh shakes his head. “No. No, Tyler, I can't.”

“You have to,” Tyler repeats. “Please, Josh. I can't be--” he stops, steadies his breathing before going on. “I can't be one of them, you know that.”

“But I can't kill you,” Josh whispers, looking into the other boy's face. The pain in his eyes mirrors what Tyler should be feeling now. 

Carefully, slowly, Tyler tries to get to his feet. Josh reaches out to help him, but Tyler puts his hands out. “No, don't. I can do it.” After a few more tries, he manages to stand and stumble over to the small counter by the sink.

He reaches in, and pulls out the gun Josh confronted him with what seems like forever ago.

“When I go,” he manages, blood on the edges of his lips. “Come get the gun after a few minutes. You'll need it.”

Tears are streaming down Josh's face. “I love you,” he says.

Without a word, Tyler pushes out through the bathroom door, gun in hand. Softly, almost inaudibly, he hears the lock click behind him. Josh isn't a fool. He knows to keep the Devourers out, and that's what Tyler is now.

He puts the gun to his head, breathes in, and fires. 

There is blood, so much blood.

And then, there is nothing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> "The end can't come soon enough, but is it too soon? Either way, he can't deny he is the pantaloon."


End file.
